from the pron dept

While America is often portrayed as a hive of liberal debauchery, with a media environment heavy on skin and short on substance, unmentioned is a prudish strain that runs just as deep and as afoul of the mainstream. This hidden brand of puritanism rears its head in many ways, one of which is the unfortunate call to have technology companies block access to perfectly legal content in the name of protecting the gentle minds of the citizenry. Utah has attempted this in the form of calls to have phones come stock with filters to block pornography, full stop. And, while Utah is by no means alone in America in this endeavor, this sort of unconstitutional grab at the minds of the people is most often attempted in the more conservative, and religious, states. This, of course, despite all of the collateral damage to educational and otherwise useful material that comes along with this sort of thing.

State representative Paulette Rakestraw has filed House Bill 509 which would require retailers to put a “digital blocking capability” on some devices to make “obscene material” inaccessible. Retailers, in this code section, would mean anyone who SELLS or LEASES a device that allows content to be accessed on the Internet. The “blocking capability” is required to make porn, child porn, revenge porn, websites about prostitution, and websites about sex trafficking all inaccessible. Retailers would be required to have a telephone line where consumers could call to report complaints and it prohibits retailers from giving consumers intel on how to deactivate the blocking program themselves.

There's a lot to say about why this sort of thing is dumb, so let's just rapid fire them off. First, the inclusion of porn generally, as opposed to the requirement to block the more illicit content discussed above, renders this unconstitutional, as I mentioned above. That pesky First Amendment tends to stand in the way of government attempts to prohibit otherwise perfectly legal content and speech, of which pornography is generally included. The rather cynical way this general block on pornography is wrapped in the cloak of attempts to block the familiar enemies, like child porn and trafficking sites, adds to how slimy this all is. And this final sentence of the paragraph is where I would typically mention how easily circumvented these types of filters tend to be, except one of the proposed law's other provisions appears to try to tackle that in a way that requires further discussion.

Here is the real humdinger: If you are 18 years of age or older, request in writing that you would like to deactivate the program, acknowledge in writing that you understand the dangers (yes, that is really the word they use) of deactivating the program, and pay a $20 fee, you can have the program removed from your device.

You read that correctly. If, as a reasonable, responsible, American adult, you wish to look at obscene material in the privacy of your own home, you have to tell the grandmother at the Wal-Mart check out line that you would like her to delete the program so you can enjoy the device to the fullest extent.

This puts the government in Georgia in the uncomfortable position of not only attempting to enact an unconstitutional law, but it also requires them to be grifters off of those that would enjoy the same material it seeks to block. Making $20 from adults who want to circumvent the filter required by the law means the state of Georgia stands to profit financially from its citizens' masturbation habits. And, while that's plainly just gross, it's the attempt to keep the public from knowing how to circumvent the filter themselves that makes this all look like a self-pleasure-tax than anything resembling an attempt to block illicit material. After all, how needed is a filter to block obscene material if the government is willing to allow it not to be blocked for the cost of a pizza?

Where the censorship of legitimate and legal speech is pretty plainly unconstitutional, specifically taxing a form of speech is painfully so.

Porn is free speech. This is a tax on free speech. A tax on people who wish to exercise and enjoy free speech. Here’s another thing: By taxing porn, the government is condoning the industry, “allowing” it to exist, if you will. If the risks are SO high for sex trafficking and child pornography, then all porn should be illegal.

The fact that there is no advocacy for eradication of porn just reiterates the point: This isn’t about protecting anyone or helping anyone. It’s about taxing a vulnerable industry that is considered immoral. There is less resistance. After all, who is going to speak out in favor of porn?

Well, I will, for starters. And I will do so unashamedly. Pornography itself has all kinds of useful and healthy applications, all of which have been documented scientifically. This isn't to say there are no downsides, or potential downsides, but there is a healthy application for pornography and the activities that tend to go with it. On top of that, giving government the power to block that which is deemed to be "obscene" or "pornographic" is rife with problems that far outweigh any potential benefits in censoring it. The public is not served living at the pleasure of a government that can decide what is good for it. And taxing it, not out of existence, but into legitimacy, is as crass and cynical a thing a local government can do.

Which is likely all besides the point. This, again, is unconstitutional, which should be the end of the discussion.

from the perverts:-please-sign-here dept

It looks like Israel wants to take a UK-esque approach to internet porn. The Israeli government is considering mandating site blocking at the ISP level, rather than allowing end users to make their own decisions, as Quartz's Anaya Bhattacharya reports:

On Oct. 30, the Ministerial Committee for Legislation unanimously green-lit a bill that would force internet companies to censor pornography by default. The committee approved the measure in a bid to clamp down on rampant underage access to adult content online, the Times of Israel reported.

“The damaging influence of watching, and addiction to, pornographic and severe violence has been proven in many studies, with great harm to children. Today, it is easier for a child to consume harsh content on the internet than to buy an ice cream at the local kiosk,” said Moalem-Refaeli. “We must prevent such access by making the default of the internet provider to filter such content, unless the customer has asked to be exposed to it,” she added.

So, because internet porn is easier to access than ice cream, ISPs may be forced to stop allowing ice cream to flow uninterrupted through its lines unless customers of age specifically ask to be "exposed to" ice cream. If customers want porn to burst from every digital orifice connected to their ISP, they would need to opt-in via phone call, letter, or through the ISP's website.

Other people, who would just like to have their access to websites less effed up will also have to do the same, considering website filtering/blocking is far from perfect and tends to net a bunch of false positives. Critics of the bill only have to point to all the other times this has happened to provide examples of why this is a bad idea.

In addition, a list of opt-in users would be created because there's no way an opt-in "service" doesn't. I can't imagine why the government might be interested in the contents of such a list, but the fact that it's there means it could be obtained without too much paperwork if "needed." Then there are other outside forces, like malicious hackers, who might find it entertaining to plaster lists of "porn, please!" users all over the internet.

Less damaging to internet users' privacy would be a more voluntary system that allows users to request porn filtering and site blocking, rather than make this the default. But all of these issues are ignored when legislators engage in "for the children" legislation. Simple niceties like an open internet and user privacy are no match for impassioned pleas for all the ice cream-eating 8-year-olds of [insert nation here].

from the pron dept

When we've talked in the past about government attempting to outright block pornography sites, those efforts have typically been aimed at sites hosting child pornography. Blocking child porn is a goal that's impossible to rebel against, though the methods for achieving it are another matter entirely. Too often, these attempts task ISPs and mobile operators with the job of keeping this material out of the public eye, which is equal parts burdensome, difficult to do, and rife with collateral damage. Other nations, on the other hand, have gone to some lengths to outright block pornography in general, such as in Pakistan for religious reasons, or in the UK for save-the-children reasons. If the attempts to block child porn resulted in some collateral damage, the attempts to outright censor porn from the internet resulted in a deluge of such collateral damage. For this reason, and because we have that pesky First Amendment in America, these kinds of efforts attempted by the states have run into the problem of being unconstitutional in the past.

But, as they say, if at first you don't succeed, just try it in an even more conservatively prudish state again. Which brings us to Utah, where state Senator Todd Weiler is leading the effort to purge his state of any access to porn on mobile devices.

Utah Senator Todd Weiler has proposed a bill to rid the state of porn by adding Internet filters and anti-porn software on all cell phones and requiring citizens to opt-in before viewing porn online. It's to save the children, he says. Weiler successfully pushed an anti-porn resolution through the state Senate earlier this year, declaring porn a "public health crisis." He now hopes to take his movement a step further by making it harder for Utah citizens to have access to digital porn.

"A cell phone is basically a vending machine for pornography," Weiler told TechCrunch, using the example of cigarettes sold in vending machines and easily accessed by children decades ago.

This is where we'd usually talk about how this sort of thing is almost certainly unconstitutional, not to mention how easily circumvented the attempt would be. And both of those remain true for this case. But I would like to instead focus on the lazy analogies Weiler chooses to make and let them serve as an example of how easily twisted people's opinions can become if you simply add "saving the children" to the goals of a particular piece of legislation.

Let's start with the quote above, although I promise you there is more from Senator Weiler that we'll discuss. He claims that a cell phone is basically a porno vending machine, like a cigarette vending machine. The only problem with his analogy is how wildly untrue it is. A cigarette vending machine has no other purpose than, you know, vending smokes. A cell phone, on the other hand, has a few other purposes. Like playing video games, for instance. Or serving as a music device. Or making god damned phone calls. A claim that a phone is simply a vending machine for porn shows either a tragic misunderstanding of basic technology or, more likely, is simply a veiled hate-bomb at the internet itself. Regardless, it is not upon government to decide how our property is used lawfully. And it isn't on government to parent children. We have people for that. They're called parents.

But Weiler wasn't done.

The senator says England was successful in blocking porn on the Internet. Prime Minister David Cameron pushed legislation through in 2013 requiring U.K. Internet service providers to give citizen's the option to filter out porn.

The good Senator must have a strange definition for success, because the UK law is easily circumvented, has managed to censor all kinds of educational and informational non-pornography sites and material, and was created by a lovely chap who was later arrested on charges of child pornography himself. If one wishes to draw upon the success of something in order to push his own interests, that something probably shouldn't be a complete dumpster fire.

Local Utah ISPs are already calling the plan unrealistic and comparing it to censorious governments that I am certain Senator Weiler would recoil from. Not that this matters, I guess, since Senator Weiler fantastically admits that he has no idea how this will all work under his law.

Weiler says he doesn't know how it would work but just wants to put the idea out there and that his main concern is kids looking at porn.

"The average age of first exposure to hard-core pornography for boys is eleven years old," he said. "I'm not talking about seeing a naked woman. I'm talking about three men gang-raping a woman and pulling her hair and spitting on her face. I don't think that's the type of sex ed we want our kids to have."

Look, I usually like to back up my rebuttals to these types of things with facts and figures, but I just don't have them in this case. That isn't going to stop me from declaring that the average first exposure to pornography is an eleven year old boy seeing exactly three men gang-raping a woman is a line of bullshit so deep that the Utah Senate certainly must provision knee-high boots to its membership for such a thing to even be suggested. And this should tell you everything you need to know about Senator Weiler's plans: he doesn't know how successful it's been elsewhere, he doesn't know how it works, and he's willing to sell it to the public on the basis of a scary lie.

from the Cameron-noted-he-'doesn't-really-keep-up-with-the-news...' dept

The EU's new net neutrality "protections" are largely deserving of the scare quotes, what with their myriad loopholes and built-in provisions that allow ISPs to throttle/manipulate traffic to prevent "congestion" -- something that has yet to be the actual source of any ISP's "traffic $haping" efforts.

During Prime Minister's Questions, Cameron said he realised the knock-on effect from the EU bill over breakfast.

"When I read my Daily Mail this morning, I sputtered over my cornflakes because we worked so hard to put in place these filters," he told fellow MPs.

The new neutrality rules forbid traffic discrimination (except when they don't; see above). Porn filtering at the ISP level is exactly that: blocking certain traffic simply because of its originating source. So much for Cameron's "voluntary*" porn-filtering scheme.

*under the threat of legislation

And now the man who reckons porn filtering will work because he says it will work has secured a temporary exception from the EU's new rules. How long it will last is unknown. In the meantime, Cameron will be working hard to legislate a UK-only neutrality loophole that will hopefully survive inspection by the EU. This unexpected dismantling of his slapped-together, officially unofficial porn ban has resulted in Cameron stepping up his push to upgrade "voluntary" filtering to "mandatory."

Cameron continued: "I can tell the House that we will legislate to put our agreement with internet companies into the law of the land so that our children will be protected."

LOL at agreement. "Do this or else" isn't an "agreement." Now, despite being previously voluntold by Cameron to make with the porn filtering, ISPs will now be legislated at by the shocked and worried Prime Minister. Presumably this effort will ultimately be successful, as voting against this would suggest the reluctant legislator(s) believe underage children should have access to porn, rather than said legislator(s) feeling the government shouldn't be in the business of deciding what forms of legal entertainment ISP subscribers can access.

from the always-broken...-always dept

The "Great Firewall of Britain" claims another victim. "Voluntary" (as in: under the threat of legislation) internet filtering by ISPs has blocked UK citizens from connecting to the website of one of the oldest computer hacking groups in existence.

A significant portion of British citizens are currently blocked from accessing the Chaos Computer Club's (CCC) website. On top of that, Vodafone customers are blocked from accessing the ticket sale to this year's Chaos Communication Congress (31C3).

The post goes on to note that while these filters are faulty and suffer from overbroad content flagging, they can be easily bypassed simply by using the site's IP address: 213.73.89.123. It also points out that this blockage could possibly be deliberate, rather than due to the inherent technical limitations of poorly-designed web filters.

However, it may very well be that the CCC is considered "extremist" judged by British standards of freedom of speech.

Could be. Governments tend to treat all hackers as criminals, no matter how much the standard definition deviates from government officials' misconceptions. The Chaos Computer Club, despite being Europe's largest hacker community, is not composed of criminals. But it has engaged in several acts that would make it less popular with various governments, including reverse engineering "lawful access" malware used by German law enforcement (which included installations on school computers), uncovering a government backdoor in Skype and filing a criminal complaint against the German government for its massive domestic surveillance programs.

As it stands now, it appears that only Three is currently blocking the main CCC website. The Open Rights Group's "Blocked" website indicates that Virgin Media and Vodafone had both blocked the site until recently, but appear to have removed CCC from their blacklists on Nov. 27th and Dec. 8th, respectively.

Blocking the CCC is just another demonstration of how internet filters don't work. The filter fails on multiple levels, going overboard with the blocking while simultaneously allowing users to bypass the system using nothing more than an IP address. The end result is the UK's passive-aggressive filter-by-proxy, one that hangs the threat of regulatory legislation over the heads of ISPs while signing off on "will this do?" filtering.

An opening anecdote details the porn-fueled formative years of Gabe Deem -- now a youth counselor who runs "reboot" programs for other porn-addled teens. This recounting concludes with the following paragraph:

“Ultimately it desensitized me and rewired my brain to my computer screen to the point where, in real life, I couldn’t feel anything in an intimate situation,” he said in an interview. “My generation was told growing up that porn was cool because it was ‘sex positive.’ But what can be more ‘sex negative’ than being unable to perform in bed?”

Deem did what any concerned young adult would in his situation: he self-diagnosed.

He Googled his symptoms and found a name for the condition: Porn-induced erectile dysfunction.

[A] former corporate attorney with degrees from Brown and Yale who writes books about the unwelcome effects of evolutionary biology on intimate relationships and the striking parallels between recent scientific discoveries and traditional sacred-sex texts…

So, on one hand, we have a closed, self-sustaining ecosystem promoting the idea that porn use can create erectile dysfunction. On the other hand, we have actual psychology. This is McLaren's opening salvo, the one supposed to sway the uncertain onto her side of the issue -- and one that doesn't hold up under scrutiny.

But it gets worse.

Porn-induced erectile dysfunction is now well documented by the mainstream medical community.

Dr. Oz devoted a show to the topic last year, and just a few months ago, researchers at Cambridge University found that porn addicts’ brains have similar responses to pleasure cues as the brains of alcoholics or drug addicts.

And as for the research, it only points to addicts' addictions triggering the similar pleasurable responses. Almost anything can be consumed up to the point that it becomes "too much of a good thing," but that's no reason to demand the proprietor (such as it were) control the end user's actions. But that's what McLaren does.

First, she offers up her own comparably pristine past as a shocking contrast to today's routine debasement.

While my generation learned to do sex by reading the dirty bits of Sweet Valley High novels and fumbling around sweatily in our parent’s basements, this generation will have learned to do sex by watching semi-violent six-ways involving hairy men and vajazzled strippers squealing on dirty linoleum floors.

Look at the language McLaren uses. There's more to her advocacy than a concern for the young men and women of the world. Her sense of shame has been violated by proxy and she's projecting it all over the Globe and Mail's editorial pages. "Hairy." "Dirty." "Squealing." "Six-ways." [??]

That's followed by this sentence, which is extremely jarring in its cognizant dissonance.

[T]he solution is surprisingly simple: The Internet is public space and we need to police it. We built it. We own it. It’s where we live and where our kids are growing up. We should be applying the same standards of decency to the Internet as we do anywhere else.

This sounds like a plea for personal responsibility and more attentive parenting. It's your house and your internet. Police it as you see fit. Use any number of third-party products to filter content if you need to (not that they'll work any better than those pushed by governments). Apply your preferred "standards of decency" to your actions and those of your children.

That's what it sounds like. But it isn't.

No, this problem can't be solved by personal actions. It needs to be forced on those who provide the connection. By the government.

In the U.K., Prime Minister David Cameron recently strong-armed the major Internet service providers into applying automatic porn filters to all mobile and broadband connections in the country... The service providers resisted heavily at first, claiming such controls were a matter of parental responsibility and tantamount to censorship, but after the government made it clear it would legislate if necessary, the ISPs relented. Unsurprisingly, the move has proved hugely popular, particularly among parents.

First, she presents the ISPs "relenting" as if it were some sort of equitable compromise rather than the only response that would prevent further government meddling. What was "strong-armed" into place was preferable to the amount of damage that could conceivably be done by a handful of legislators operating under the influence of moral panic.

Second, it is not hugely popular. It just is. The "mandatory" is always more "popular" than the truly optional. Add to this the additonal (if minor) hurdle of opting out of "voluntary" internet filtering. When you make something "opt out," most people will take the path of least resistance and go with the pre-selected choice: "opt in." Something strong-armed into pseudo-policy by a determined government is never "popular." It takes a very special kind of mind (and predisposition) to portray it that way.

McLaren wraps up her post by strongly suggesting Canadian ISPs be given the same mandate: filter or else. Make Canada every bit as ineffectively censorious as the UK, because Mehmet Oz, "porn-induced erectile dysfunction" internet circle jerks, and the "pornification of our children" demand it. (Yes. Actual quote.) But also do it to rid McLaren's Canada of the ultimate, unspeakable obscenities: "dirty floors," "hairy men" and "squealing porn stars."

from the aspiring-to-be-the-nation's-conscience dept

M.G. in Greenbrae, CA must have been inspired by UK Prime Minister David Cameron's quest for a porn-free Britain. The Prime Minister's idealism has resulted in an insistence that all internet providers make access to porn "opt-in." Anti-porn filters are on by default. For the children.

As the Daily Dot points out, M.G.'s petition for online porn blockage is likely to be severely short on support. For one, the US government has been generally opposed to regulating the internet in this fashion. Not that there aren't plenty of little instances where legislators have imposed their will on internet communications, but by and large, a nationwide censoring of certain content is highly unlikely. For another, it's highly unlikely a majority of Americans would be supportive of a plan that makes them ask, in writing, for their internet porn tap to be turned back on.

That being said, it's a large nation with 300 million people, a certain percentage of which enjoy imposing their morality on others. 100,000 signatures isn't completely out of the question. (Not that this will guarantee an administration response…)

But what is M.G. asking for, specifically? Here's the entire petition, which is mercifully brief.

Require Porn to be an "Opt In" feature with Internet Service Providers rather than a standard feature.

Hang on. Let's deal with the title first. I don't believe any ISP offers porn as a "standard feature." Yes, your internet access will provide you with a gateway to porn, but it's not on the feature list right after the breakdown of your underachieving (but overpriced!) connection speed. So, "porn" isn't a standard feature -- it's just something that's available on the internet. And it's far from the only thing.

In its current state, Internet porn seeks out users by email solicitations and massive amounts of free content throughout Internet browser searches. The average person, even children, can type in the word "cat" or "home" or "soup" and instantly be inundated with offensive and disturbing pornographic images. Parents and individuals have to go to great lengths to install Internet filters that often don't weed out all porn. We are asking for greater protection and responsibility from Internet Service providers and our country. We are asking that people who are interested in porn should have to seek it and choose it. They should have to "Opt In" for it by making arrangements to receive it with their Internet Service Provider. Everyone else should be free from it and assumed "Opt Out".

It would appear that M.G. has clicked through on some very questionable ads and linkbait and, worse, provided some sketchy forms with his or her email address. I have yet to receive a porn email solicitation -- or at least, I haven't received one in years. Anyone using a halfway competent email service will find these sorts of solicitations routed directly into their spam folder without ever being made aware of porn's apparent ubiquity. Perhaps what's sketchy here is M.G.'s email provider.

Following up this dubious assertion that "average people" (including children, which is what this is all about, innit?) can stumble across porn using words like "soup." And "home." You can, if so inclined, perform some iterations of everyday words that will allow you to "inadvertently" conjure up pornographic images, but for most people, using common words will return common search results, especially considering most search engines provide a "safe" search by default. Sure, you may find some edge leakage, but for the most part, searching for "soup" will net you soup-related images and links, not porn.

And then M.G. tanks the whole thing by complaining that parents have to make an effort to protect their average children from accidentally accessing soupporn, and notes that even these so-hard-to-use filters don't even filter out all of the bad stuff. But then, M.G. ignores this gaping (soup) hole in his/her plan and arrives at a pair of bad conclusions.

1. ISPs are supposed to "protect" users. What? 2. The government can make a perfect porn-proof filter, even if private companies cannot. Wat.

This sounds like someone who wants to look at porn, but believes he (or she) shouldn't and feels this "responsibility" should be entrusted to higher powers in order to protect he/she from his/her vices. Anyone can be almost completely free of porn (edge leaks excluded) with a minimum of effort. What M.G. wants is something that prevents users from accessing porn, even if they wantto. Signees want the government to force ISPs to be their conscience, so to speak.

Now, I won't paint everyone in Utah with the same brush, but the state does have, shall we say, a prevailing religion. Now, like most religions, Mormons believe porn is "wrong." Thus, it would follow that they'd like to see it blocked. But why would they feel the government should get involved, what with church and state and all that?

A study by a Harvard Business School professor shows that Utah outpaces the more conservative states -- which all tend to purchase more Internet porn than other states…

Utah has the nation's highest online porn subscription rate per thousand home broadband users, at 5.47, while the nearby states of Idaho and Montana showed the lowest rates of 1.98 and 1.92, respectively, according to the study.

All speculation, of course, but this looks a whole lot like a bunch of people want assistance curbing their vices. This puts the onus (a word that only sounds dirty) on someone else to put them on the path to righteousness. More "evidence?" The next two states listed most frequently are Idaho (Utah Lite) and Texas (a state that elected Rick Perry, someone who still makes political hay complaining about the disappearance of prayer from public schools).

Now, the petition is gaining new signatures at a slow but pretty steady pace, making it a long shot to make 100,000. But not impossible. So, there's a slim chance the administration may have another petition to ignore (or talk around) by the end of November.

Conversely, if you're one of those people completely unaffected by this sort of moral panic, you may be finding your internet is woefully inefficient when it comes to delivering the porn-y goodness. Good news! Someone out there, also inspired by David Cameron's porn blocking, has compiled a bit of scripting to help you properly filter the internet [possibly NSFW - "denial" page contains hand-drawn penises] by swiftly separating the porn wheat from the overly-inhibited chaff (via Egg Miliband) by using a porn filter against itself.

The filter is a dns server which checks all queries against the OpenDNS FamilyShield DNS server. Any request that is denied by OpenDNS is then allowed by our DNS server, and any request allowed by OpenDNS is blocked by us.

The server itself is built using the python Twisted framework which handles both the DNS requests and acts as a simple web-server to host the denial page.

from the serious-policymaking-much? dept

In the UK there is currently a campaign and associated petition from the organization "Safety Net: Protecting Innocence Online", which calls for mandatory Net filtering of pornography -- people would need to opt out of the system if they wanted to view this material. The justification -- of course -- is the usual "won't someone think of the children?" Here's the pitch:

Every day children and young people are accessing mainstream pornography on the internet, including the most hardcore, violent and abusive images. Evidence clearly shows pornography has a detrimental impact on children and young people including premature sexualisation, negative body image and unhealthy notions about relationships. This cannot be allowed to continue.

One of the key statistics relied upon by the campaign is that "1 in 3 10 year olds have seen pornography online". They do recognise it was published in Psychologies Magazine in 2010, but the appearance is given that this is a serious statistic. It’s also used in their 'Key Facts' briefing.

When you dig a little deeper however, that definitely isn't the case. The full section in the magazine reads:

"We've had plenty of letters from concerned readers on this very topic, and when we decided to canvass the views of 14- to 16-year-olds at a north London secondary school, the results took us by surprise.

Almost one-third first looked at sexual images online when they were aged 10 or younger."

So, the statistic -- […] at the heart of the petition's press release -- is based on one magazine's anecdotal research at a single school.

Actually, it's even more ridiculous than that. That "statistic" states "[a]lmost one-third first looked at sexual images online when they were aged 10 or younger." But as is well known, UK newspaper titles like Rupert Murdoch's "The Sun" carry "sexual images" -- pictures of topless women -- every day. Given the large circulation of the those titles, it's far more likely that children will have seen "sexual images" there, rather than online, and that their attitudes to women will have been harmed more by this kind of relentless objectification than by isolated images they come across on the Internet. And yet strangely no one is calling for Rupert Murdoch's newspapers to be censored.

It's a classic demonization of the Internet that ignores the broader context, and is based on the flimsiest of pretexts. Worryingly, the UK government is sending out clear signals that it supports this campaign regardless. It's currently conducting a consultation on "Parental Internet controls", which closes on September 6. It's extremely poorly worded and clearly biased in favour of the idea of making blanket censorship the default.

If such Net blocks are brought in, legitimate sites will inevitably be blocked by mistake, but it's not so clear that the objectives of protecting children will be achieved. With blocks in place, parents may be lulled into a false sense of security, and so fail to supervise their children's online activities adequately, which will leave the latter exposed to greater not lesser risks. Meanwhile, young people will find ways to circumvent the blocks -- or just buy a copy of "The Sun".